A Guide to North Carolina's Freshwater Fishes

By Bryn Tracy, Fred C. Rohde, Scott Smith and 2 more

More than 250 species of freshwater fishes live in North Carolina waters, making identification a challenge. Thanks to this comprehensive guide, anyone will be able to accurately identify any fish found in North Carolina—and better appreciate the diversity and beauty of fishes within the state.

Inside the book:

* Detailed identification keys based on essential species markers
* 546 full-color images for clear identification of species markers
* 260 maps showing species distribution throughout the state
* Information on the freshwater fish families and ichthyological history of North Carolina
* An appendix that explains the meanings behind the scientific names

This is the must-have reference for nature lovers and anglers in North Carolina and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781469678122

Bryn Tracy

Bryn H. Tracy is an adjunct researcher at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Book preview

A GUIDE TO NORTH CAROLINA’S FRESHWATER FISHES

A GUIDE TO NORTH CAROLINA’S FRESHWATER FISHES

Bryn H. Tracy

Fred C. (Fritz) Rohde

Scott A. Smith

Jesse L. Bissette

Gabriela M. Hogue

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS | CHAPEL HILL

A Southern Gateways Guide

© 2024 Bryn H. Tracy, Fred C. (Fritz) Rohde, Scott A. Smith, Jesse L. Bissette, Gabriela M. Hogue

All rights reserved

Designed by April Leidig

Set in Garamond by Copperline Book Services, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover photograph by Todd Pusser. Foreground: Crescent Shiner, Luxilus cerasinus (males in breeding color), atop a Bluehead Chub, Nocomis leptocephalus, nest in South Double Creek, Stokes County, NC. Background: Mountain Redbelly Dace, Chrosomus oreas.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tracy, Bryn H., author. | Rohde, Fred C., author. | Smith, Scott A. (Marine biologist), author. | Bissette, Jesse L., author. | Hogue, Gabriela M., author.

Title: A guide to North Carolina’s freshwater fishes / Bryn H. Tracy, Fred C. (Fritz) Rohde, Scott A. Smith, Jesse L. Bissette, Gabriela M. Hogue.

Other titles: Southern gateways guide.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2024] | Series: Southern gateways guide | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023040816 (print) | LCCN 2023040817 (ebook) | ISBN 9781469678115 (paperback) | ISBN 9781469678122 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Freshwater fishes—North Carolina—Identification. | LCGFT: Field guides.

Classification: LCC QL628.N8 T73 2024 (print) | LCC QL628.N8 (ebook) | DDC 597.17609756—dc23/eng/20230920

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040816

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040817

Southern Gateways Guide™ is a registered trademark of the University of North Carolina Press.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1 Aids for Identification

2 Identification Key to the Families of Freshwater Fishes in North Carolina

3 Monospecific Families

4 Lampreys (Family Petromyzontidae)

5 Sturgeons (Family Acipenseridae)

6 Shads (Families Alosidae and Dorosomatidae)

7 Suckers (Family Catostomidae)

8 Minnows (Families Cyprinidae, Leuciscidae, and Xenocyprididae)

9 North American Catfishes (Family Ictaluridae)

10 Pikes (Family Esocidae)

11 Trouts and Salmons (Family Salmonidae)

12 Sleepers (Family Eleotridae)

13 Gobies (Family Gobiidae)

14 Sand Flounders (Family Paralichthyidae)

15 Cichlids (Family Cichlidae)

16 New World Silversides (Family Atherinopsidae)

17 Topminnows (Family Fundulidae)

18 Livebearers (Family Poeciliidae)

19 Mullets (Family Mugilidae)

20 Temperate Basses (Family Moronidae)

21 Drums and Croakers (Family Sciaenidae)

22 Perches and Darters (Family Percidae)

23 Sculpins (Family Cottidae)

24 Sunfishes (Family Centrarchidae)

25 Pygmy Sunfishes (Family Elassomatidae)

Acknowledgments

Appendix. The Meanings of the Scientific Names of North Carolina’s Freshwater Fishes

Glossary

Literature Cited

Literature Consulted

General Index

Index of Common and Scientific Names

About the Authors

PREFACE

North Carolina’s fresh waters course through our state from streams originating atop the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. Flowing westward and south to the Gulf of Mexico and eastward to the Atlantic Ocean, they create myriad and varied aquatic habitats. From our Mountain region the crystal-clear, cold, high-gradient, boulder-strewn streams give way to muddy and warm Piedmont streams and reservoirs. Our Sand Hills region contains unique tea-colored, tannin-stained, and sandy-bottomed streams. The dark, coffee-colored, and mucky-bottomed Coastal Plain streams find their way into the sounds and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

Among all these areas of fresh water, the aquatic habitats are many and include braided and channelized swamps, abandoned mill ponds, farm ponds, wetlands, bay lakes, and rivers and streams that drain our largest and densest metropolitan areas. In every one of these habitats, darting beneath the surface, can be found at least 1 of the 258 species of freshwater fishes. Ranging in size from under two inches to more than fourteen feet in length and with some as odd-shaped as science fiction–conjured images of alien animals, most species are unknown to the public and therefore live a life of obscurity. To us, this is difficult to comprehend. Their diversity is astounding, and their beauty rivals that of their colorful tropical and marine counterparts. It is our hope that this book, along with An Annotated Atlas of the Freshwater Fishes of North Carolina (Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue 2020) and NCFishes.com, will ignite a spark and sustain your interest in the exploration and conservation of our rich freshwater fish fauna and their aquatic habitats.

INTRODUCTION

From Wolf Creek, the westernmost community in Cherokee County, to the small Outer Banks town of Buxton in Dare County, North Carolina’s fresh waters are home to forty families of fishes (table 1): thirty-one families whose species are primarily freshwater, five families whose species are primarily marine and estuarine, and four families whose species are almost evenly split between freshwater and marine. Also included are six families that are not indigenous (native) to North Carolina—Cichlidae, Cobitidae, Cyprinidae, Gasterosteidae, Loricariidae, and Xenocyprididae.

TABLE 1. North Carolina’s freshwater fish fauna listed in phylogenetic order following Fricke, Eschmeyer, and van der Laan (2022)

These forty families inhabiting North Carolina’s fresh waters include 242 described species (three of which are extirpated species) and 16 undescribed species (tables 1 and 2). The two most speciose families are Leuciscidae (68 species) and Percidae (40 species). There are seventeen families that have only one freshwater species found in North Carolina (tables 1 and 2). The sixteen undescribed species that are currently known can be identified using the identification keys that were developed for each family found in the following chapters. There may be additional undescribed species within what are currently considered species complexes, such as Bluehead Chub, Nocomis leptocephalus; Mimic Shiner, Paranotropis volucellus; Mottled Sculpin, Cottus bairdii; and Fantail Darter, Etheostoma flabellare (Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue, 2020). These complexes are currently being studied and may add additional species to the already rich fauna. The full distributional picture of what we currently know about North Carolina’s native (indigenous) and nonnative (nonindigenous) freshwater fish fauna can be extrapolated from table 2, which has been compiled via the labors of many ichthyologists over many decades.

TABLE 2. Phylogenetic listing of freshwater fishes by river basin

A Chronological History of Ichthyological Surveys and Collections in North Carolina

Our state’s rich ichthyological history harks back to 1682 when Thomas Ash wrote a general description of the fish fauna of Carolina, which referred to all the coastal lands between Florida and Virginia (Ash, 1682; Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue, 2020). In the roughly 340 years since then, ichthyologists from near and far have surveyed, collected, and published on our diverse freshwater and estuarine fauna (table 3). The first state-specific checklist was provided by John Lawson (1709, 152–60), and it was received in such high regard that it was later plagiarized extensively by Brickell (1737) when he wrote The Natural History of North-Carolina. For the past 150 years, checklists and publications detailing the fishes of the state have appeared regularly, beginning with Cope (1870b) and continuing with Jordan (1889b), Jordan and Evermann (1896–1900), Smith (1907), Jordan and Clark (1930), Fowler (1945), Louder (1962a), and Ratledge, Carnes, and Collins (1966). Menhinick, Burton, and Bailey (1974) published an annotated checklist, which relied heavily upon Randall (1957), the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s (NCWRC) 1960s stream survey data (Starnes and Hogue, 2011), and Joseph R. Bailey’s (Duke University) unpublished survey data from 1947 and 1949 of the Hiwassee, Little Tennessee, Savannah, Pigeon, French Broad, Nolichucky, Watauga, New, and Yadkin basins. Later, Menhinick published The Freshwater Fishes of North Carolina (1991) using datasets from the NCWRC and Bailey, distributional maps from Lee et al. (1980), the 1974 checklist, unpublished manuscripts archived at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and his and other researchers’ personal collections. Although the distributional maps and some of the taxonomic nomenclature are now outdated, the book is still popular and widely in use. More recent field guides, including identifying characteristics, illustrations, photographs, and distributional maps, have appeared (for example, Page and Burr, 2011; Rohde et al., 1994). In 2020, Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue (2020) published an updated and annotated atlas of the state’s indigenous and nonindigenous freshwater fish fauna, which utilized the tremendous amount of accessible data from museums and state agencies to create the most up-to-date distributional picture of North Carolina’s freshwater fish fauna.

TABLE 3. Important milestones in the ichthyological history of North Carolina since the 1850s

Smith’s 1907 publication The Fishes of North Carolina was truly the first publication that included identification keys for 345 fresh, brackish, and saltwater species and their abundances, distributions, habitats, migrations, spawning, and food value. In the book’s preface, Joseph Hyde Pratt, state geologist, stated that the goal of Smith’s book was to create:

a deeper interest in the welfare of both fishes and fishermen, and a better understanding of the condition and needs of the fishing industry, with a view to placing this important branch on a permanent basis and making it yield an increasing revenue to both State and people. … It is hoped that this volume will be the means of creating such an interest in the fisheries that suitable laws for their protection may be enacted as needed, and that the State officers charged with the administration of the fisheries may have the sympathy and cooperation of all citizens. (iv)

In this publication, Smith described a new species, a goby, Microgobius holmesi, and gave it the common name of Holmes’ Goby (figure 1). An interesting fact was that the goby was named after Professor J. A. Holmes, a former state geologist and director of the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey, who had requested that Smith produce this guide to the fishes of North Carolina. The species was known from a single specimen collected in 1904 from Uncle Israel Shoal in Beaufort Harbor. Unfortunately, this species and the other species of Microgobius, M. eulepis Eigenmann and Eigenmann, which Smith listed as occurring in Beaufort Harbor at the same shoal, were later synonymized by Birdsong (1981) with Green Goby, M. thalassinus.

FIGURE 1. Microgobius holmesi Smith 1907, Holmes’ Goby. Illustration adapted from Smith (1907).

Prior to Smith (1907), twenty species had been described from North Carolina, including one catfish, five darters, nine minnows, four suckers, and one topminnow (table 4). The first species described from North Carolina was Clinostomus carolinus (Girard, 1856, p. 212). However, because this species was later synonymized with the Rosyside Dace, Clinostomus funduloides Girard, 1856, by Lachner and Deubler (1960), the Bluehead Chub, Nocomis leptocephalus (Girard, 1856, p. 213) became the first species to be described from North Carolina that has not been synonymized with any other species (Tracy, 2013; Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue, 2020). Since Smith’s 1907 work, another seventeen species have been described from North Carolina (table 4). Professor Edward Drinker Cope was the most prolific ichthyologist in species descriptions, describing 46 of our 242 known species between 1865 and 1871 (Tracy, Rohde, and Hogue, 2020; Tracy and Jenkins, 2021). The most recently described species is the Carolina Pygmy Sunfish, Elassoma boehlkei, described by Rohde and Arndt in 1987. Currently, there are sixteen species awaiting formal taxonomic descriptions. Those species are within the families Leuciscidae (5), Catostomidae (5), Ictaluridae (3), Fundulidae (1), Percidae (1), and Centrarchidae (1) (table 2).

TABLE 4. Species described from North Carolina and their type localities

More than 340 years have passed since Thomas Ash’s publication, and today’s aquatic environments and fish communities would be unrecognizable to him. There has been a dramatic change in the